Little Caterpillar
by PoppieJoy
Summary: There was a melody in the beat of every breath she took and it was harmonized with our moans and our whispering kisses.


**So I'm jetting off to Florida tomorrow and I wanted to publish something for you all. I've had this waiting in the wings for ages but I kind of forgot about it because I literally have no idea where it came from or what it's really about. It may have come about at some point that someone on my tumblr (i-fly-with-broken-wings) asked me to write some 'classy smut'. I'm sorry to the anon that requested that but I really did not know what to make of that so I interpreted it as a making love smut type thing but really, I can't write smut because I feel far too self conscious so this won't really fit the bill. But enough babbling already; I'd love to hear your thoughts.**

**I apologise for any mistakes; I definitely have not checked this over!**

**Enjoy x**

The first time it happened, I was five. I don't remember much of it apart from the incessant burning in between my neck and my left shoulder. The second time it happened, I was seven and even then, I still don't remember anything except the burning, only this time it pinched ceaselessly at my collarbone. And then it was only a couple months later it happened a third time with the familiar burning screaming negligently on my sternum right down to my tummy button.

I remember that one hurt a lot.

It stopped for a while whilst he was in prison. I remember those two years he was away very clearly. I remember running through sunflower fields trying to catch the floating leaves that had been brushed off the yellow flowers by the summer breeze. I remember throwing pebbles into the lake next to my Grandma's house in the fall and making bets with her how many ripples would roll away from the point of entry. I remember sitting in her kitchen in the dead of winter, huddled on Gramps' lap, his big strong arms wrapped protectively around me as he tried desperately hard to block out the screaming words coming from my mother as she battled with my Grandma over _him. _I remember them battling again as we watched the Gramps help the lambs being born.

It was always over _him._

The day it happened a fourth time was coincidently the Fourth of July, a couple weeks after he'd been released from prison. I was nine and it had happened in the shed at the back of our house. He'd told me that if I didn't stop crying, he was going to kill me.

(I wasn't allowed to watch the fireworks.)

The burn had been right across my tummy. It hadn't stopped burning and it had made me cry even more and when he couldn't shut me up he made my arms burn and then he made my legs burn, almost until there was nowhere else to burn me.

I remember the pain so well from that night.

The shed door had slammed and that and it had taken me a while to realise I wasn't still in it. We were running and I wasn't sure what we were running for but I had been scared and I couldn't stop screaming.

The burn was making me scream.

Waking up in a woodland trench, slopped in mud and freezing like the biting frost has never left me. Every morning I wake up, I still believe I'm there, freezing and shaking and burning.

_Burning._

Grandma and Gramps took me away then. They moved me away from Illinois, (away from the burning), and over to Kentucky. To sunflower chasing and pebble throwing. They took me away and told my mum I wasn't coming back.

Grandma and Gramps took me to a school. There were paper fishes and butterflies and ducks plastered all over the walls and my teacher, Miss Pillsbury, took me to the lake every lunchtime to feed the ducks.

I liked ducks.

We used to sit for a whole hour just hand feeding them bread and throwing it in the water for the more timid ones. We even found a baby duck with a broken leg which she told me was called a duckling. We took it to Gramps and he said that he couldn't really do much to save the leg so one day, Miss Pillsbury and I watched him set up in his white room and ask his team to help him cut the leg off.

"Why aren't you using a blade, Lou?" Jimmy asked when Gramps began twisting the sleeping duckling's leg.

"Because we don't use blades in this family, Jim."

Miss Pillsbury and I named the duckling Brucie after Bruce Bogtrotter in _Matilda_, because he was a fighter. Brucie was my best friend and I took him into school to show all my classmates. Noah Puckerman told me he was the coolest dude he'd ever seen and even Quinn Fabray was impressed.

Brucie lived in a little hut in my bedroom and told me that every time one of the kids at school laughed at the white and pink lines over my body, another duckling with a broken leg was saved.

I smiled every time I heard their giggles.

It was about when I was twelve that Brucie died. I found him wrapped up in one of the kittens in Grandma's pantry. At first I thought the tabby coloured kitten had killed him but then I saw him hissing at a wild fox that was scurrying out of the house and I knew that the kitten had tried to save him.

Miss Pillsbury visited me to bury Brucie with Gramps and Grandma. We made a nice little grave for him under the oak tree in the yard, the autumn leaves falling like silent whispers around us. She gave me a kiss on the cheek and wished me luck with my new school.

I cried for the first time that night since the time I woke up burning. I didn't want to leave Miss Pillsbury. How could she leave me at the same time as Brucie?

Grandma gave me the tabby kitten for Christmas. I called him Tubby because he ate all of the Christmas paper under the tree Gramps had chopped down from the valley.

I grew up loving my new school. I didn't mind that I had more homework to do and that all the boys around me started getting deeper voices. I didn't mind that the teachers kept me behind each lesson to ask if I was okay and I especially didn't mind the random notes in my locker every morning and every afternoon from someone with the name, Little Caterpillar.

When I became a Freshman and Tubby turned two, Grandma bought me a box of chocolates. I never got to eat them though because Tubby had managed to clamber onto the kitchen table, rip open the box and scoff the lot. Grandma decided we should higher his name to a Lord.

Gramps came up with Lord Tubbington.

Tubbs used to talk to me about everything just like Brucie had. At fourteen, the pink lines had now completely turned white and they didn't seem to hurt as much. That was wrong. The white lines were supposed to be pink and they were supposed to hurt.

They were supposed to _burn_.

They were supposed to burn even if he wasn't around to make them.

I'd never spent a year of my life, since I was five, without a pink line somewhere on my body. I was used to the red gashes and the knots that tied them together after the burning had calmed down a bit. I was used to them being there.

I remember it was a Monday that I came home and saw the fireworks. It was New Years Eve and all my classmates were at Noah Puckerman's party. Quinn Fabray had invited me and Grandma had helped me get ready, straightening my little pink dress out and curling my blonde hair for me.

"Oh, darling, you look beautiful."

No one had ever called me beautiful before.

When I turned up, the noise was nearly deafening and Grandma asked me over and over again whether I would be okay.

I was terrified.

But Quinn Fabray found me hovering by Grandma's car and told her politely, "She'll be okay with me."

Quinn Fabray was beautiful. More beautiful than I could ever be. She had the perfect smile and the perfect hair and the perfect skin. All the boys adored her. She was popular and she was perfect and she was everything I would never be.

But there was something about the petite Christian girl that always surprised me. Despite her angry, patronising and faultless outlook, she was always there.

I never knew why and I still don't know why. All I know is that the New Years Eve of my Freshman year, Quinn Fabray became my best friend.

So when I went to the bathroom to puke up everything I shouldn't have drunk, I could not understand why I was standing in front of the mirror in Noah Puckerman's house, rivers of mascara trailing down my soaking face, a razor in my hand and a deepening red stain at the hem of my once perfect pink dress.

I couldn't understand this image, even as it continued to haunt me on a daily basis for the next two years. Only my clothes would change but there would always be that red stain and there would always be those trails of mascara rivers on my wet and sopping cheeks.

The only thing that gave me any comfort at all was the fact I was getting the lines on my skin again but at least they were pink.

And the notes in my locker from Little Caterpillar.

When I was sixteen, Quinn asked me to walk with her through the forest. She linked her arm through mine and asked me about Illinois.

I told her I didn't remember much.

She never asked again.

During the year we were sixteen, Quinn and I joined Glee club. She told me it was full of people "like me" but when I entered the choir room, I couldn't see anyone with any pink lines. Not even white ones. I figured I wasn't actually like any of them.

I thought that maybe that was a good thing.

I made friends with Rachel Berry fairly quickly. Quinn told me we shouldn't like people like her but when Quinn fell pregnant and gave birth nine months later with Rachel holding her hand the whole time, she soon changed her mind.

Quinn, Rachel and I soon formed a really close friendship. Neither of them asked me about the white lines on my body and I liked it that way.

I didn't know why.

When the summer of our junior year arrived, Gramps fell ill with cancer. Grandma kept asking me why I never wore shorts and Tubbs vanished for three weeks.

Glee club, Quinn and Rachel were my sanctuaries. Quinn would have house parties where I could let go and just dance. I would dance with Tina and Mike and spend all night giggling with Mercedes Jones.

Noah taught me to smoke pot and Sam Evans taught me to play Poker.

Quinn, Rachel and I would always win.

I was seventeen when it happened for the fifth time. It wasn't like all the other times though. It didn't happen in private with just him and me. He turned up at one of our house parties.

Rachel was hosting.

As soon as I saw his face come down the stairs to her basement, I'd never wished so hard to turn back the clock and make myself tell the girls about Illinois. He strolled down those stairs like he'd studied them all his life.

He didn't once take his eyes off me.

Rachel came scurrying down the stairs huffing about how he hadn't been invited about the party and Quinn was in the middle of telling him to fuck off when he reached me, pulled out that familiar blade and slashed me.

Right across the face.

He'd never done it across my face.

He didn't say a single word as the whole glee club screamed around us. It's all I could hear through the burning scorching my face and blinding my left eye.

Through my tears and the burning and the gushing blood I saw him look at me in disgust, sink to his knee and spit, "You will die just like your precious daddy."

I hadn't thought of my daddy since I was five years old and he'd done this the first time.

I was bare then. I was an open wound, left demolished on the floor, abandoned and bleeding for the whole world to see. They could see the infinite amounts of white lines scattered like snakes around the confines of my broken body.

I was taken to Oakfire and Rivers Rehabilitation Centre after that night for seven months. I woke to blinding light and a note by the side of my bed signed, Little Caterpillar.

I woke to that every morning for the 196 days I was there.

Through the gaps in my bedroom blinds I could see the back of a young girl with raven hair and a jet black hoodie talking to the onsite therapist. She was there every day.

I only ever looked at her.

Even when Grandma visited with a letter from a too-ill Gramps lying in bed at home. Even when Quinn brought in Tubbs to see me or Rachel sang _Fix You_ in a chair right by my bedside.

Miss Pillsbury even came to visit and I still only every looked at her.

It was day 195 when she finally turned around.

Santana Lopez.

Seventeen years old, Junior year, Grade Eight pianist, Becky Jackson's worst enemy.

And a member of the glee club.

I never understood how people could lose their own breath until now.

She noticed me staring at her and I watched as she stared back. That's how we first communicated. She told me she was broken too and that I shouldn't worry. I told her that I wouldn't.

On the day I was due to go home, Grandma, Quinn and Rachel came to collect me. The scar on my face had nearly healed and I was regaining the sight in my left eye. Quinn linked her arm through mine whilst Rachel babbled on and on about everything she'd done in the summer with Finn Hudson.

I said goodbye to the nurses and my therapist and my doctor. I watched as they hurried back to their jobs and I watched as Santana Lopez came waltzing through the entrance doors, a big grin on her face as she greeted the people I'd just left.

I couldn't help but notice as she breezed past the two words making up the tattoo on her left wrist.

I remember how the beginning of my senior year terrified me more than _him_.

I had no Quinn and no Rachel as they were both in New York together. I had no Mercedes or Tina or Mike and I didn't have any of the guys to laugh with.

I was alone and it could have killed me had it not been for the note that fell out of my locker as I swung it open that morning.

I was halfway through my senior year when I finally had the courage to speak to Santana Lopez. I found her under the bleachers watching the cheerio's practice on the front lawn. I sat down beside her and we watched them together. I think we watched them for about an hour before they left and we remained where we were long after the sun went down.

It was twenty-three minutes past nine when I finally thanked her for the notes.

She'd stared at me with wide eyes as I walked away.

At the end of senior year, Gramps passed away and Grandma cried that she didn't know how to stop me from falling into my "black hole" again. I told her that Tubbs was still here and Gramps was still here if he was.

Quinn and Rachel came back from New York for his funeral and as I was leaving I spotted that familiar raven hair at the back of the church.

When it came to my graduation, Grandma decorated the yard with banners and lanterns and set up a huge bonfire right in the middle. She invited all her friends and their families and even Miss Pillsbury turned up. When she emerged from her car, Santana Lopez jumped out the back and I was so confused that Jimmy asked me if I needed to sit down.

I watched her as she walked casually behind my old teacher, her hands tucked away in her jean pockets, the hood of her black sweater shielding her face.

I could barely see her.

Jimmy helped Grandma talk about me to the gathering. She choked up at my past but concluded her speech with how proud she was of my graduating.

The party continued long into the night. It was this night that everything kind of changed.

I sneaked upstairs to wash my face and get ready for bed. I couldn't help but grimace at my reflection.

The fucking scar.

"Brittany,"

It was the first time I'd heard her speak.

I turned around to see her hovering at my door way. She looked like she was about to cry so I walked over to give her a hug but when I was about a centre metre away from her, I paused.

I barely knew her.

She looked piercingly into my eyes and I just knew she was studying my scar. I felt my eyes widen and I quickly slammed the door into her face, not even caring that I may have hurt her.

We didn't talk for two weeks after that night.

The second time we spoke, she'd found me in the horse barn stacking hay bales. She'd once again come with Miss Pillsbury, and I'd pulled my hood up so far over my head that my scar was covered in shadow.

"Brittany,"

There it was – my name again.

She'd held out her hand at that point and pulled me up on top of the hay bales. She didn't seem like she wanted to cry this time and I let her just sit there with me for several hours.

The third time we spoke was in one of the empty stables. From what I remember, we did much more than just speak. And from what I remember, the third time we spoke was the first time I ever felt anything good.

She unlatched the bolt on the door and peeked her head around, silently asking me if she could come in. I was lying on the hay in there, staring up at the beams trying to remember what life was like with Gramps.

I remained still as she walked over to me, knelt down and tucked a piece of hair out of my eyes. I didn't move as she rake a couple of her fingers through my tousles and breathed hot air onto the skin over my scalp. I was still motionless as she leant forward to kiss my temple but when she started tracing her finger over my scar, I sat bolt upright and fell into the corner of the stable.

"Brittany," She whispered, staying where she was, her eyes wide with panic. "Please,"

My breathing had been hard and my chest had been heaving. She'd slipped closer, placed her hand in mine and pulled me up so I was facing her. I didn't know why half my heart was racing and the other half was calmer than the Caribbean ocean.

"Would you like me turn the lights off?" She asked, her coffee coloured eyes pleading into mine.

I don't remember nodding but I must have since the next moment we were in pitch darkness and I couldn't feel her anywhere.

"Santana?"

It was the first time I'd said her name.

It felt wonderful.

"I'm right here,"

Her hands found my waist and pulled me closer to her. I was terrified, not knowing what she was doing, but her heavy breathing in my ear seemed to calm me down.

Her pointer finger traced my face like a feather; her skin was barely touching mine but it felt like I was on fire. Her finger moved down to my collarbone and traced the scar there, following its path like a lost traveller reading a map, navigating her way to my heart.

I think that's where she wanted to go.

"Brittany," She breathed again, her hand coming back up to cup my neck. "You're so beautiful,"

My breath quickened at that but I controlled it enough to release, "You can't even see me."

She was quick to reply with, "But I can feel you,"

Her hand tightened on my neck and suddenly our lips were touching. I'd kissed so many people I'd lost track, but here, with Santana, I'd never felt a kiss more heavy, more deep and more intense.

It felt incredible.

Her lips moved so elegantly with mine and when she pulled my bottom lip in her mouth to suck on it, my knees went weak and she could tell.

I grunted in surprise as she whispered into my mouth to move backwards. I did as she was told and when I hit the wall, she dragged her fingers down from my neck and started stroking them over the skin on my belly. Her kiss was so soft yet so hungry and when she bit my bottom lip and licked it better afterwards, I swear my heart nearly fell out of my mouth.

She could have it. She could have it all.

"Santana," I murmured, lifting my hand to cup her cheek. "This... This is so random,"

She responded by pinching the skin above my hipbone slightly, pushing me further into the wall.

"I just want you to know that you're okay," She whispered, in between kissing my jaw line and kissing down my neck.

I found her wrist and brought it to my lips, kissing it and saying softly, "Little Caterpillar,"

She stopped then, her mouth millimetres from mine. I could taste her breath and I leaned forward to kiss her. I knew she wanted to know how and I told her she was perfect through my kiss.

That's all she needed to know.

When she began kissing me back, I couldn't help but groan and it made Santana push me harder. Her hands wavered up to my chest and it was all I could do not to take my tee shirt off myself.

I went to find her hands to take them there, but she brought them down before I had a chance.

"Just feel me," She whispered, before slipping my top up and over my head.

I'm not too sure how the rest of it happened. In my mind now, it's just a blur of whispered kisses and the softest touches I've ever felt. But whatever happened, we both found ourselves naked. Santana had me pressed so hard up against the wall, and I had my hands gripped so tight around her ass that if one of us even thought about moving away, the other could stop them.

Santana kept on kissing my neck, licking and sucking and swallowing all the skin she could find and taste. Her soft murmurs against me made me so turned on that I could feel myself below, the summer breeze making me entirely aware of what the girl was doing to me.

I shivered as her fingertips traced their way down to my centre, circling around the crease of my left thigh before running the whole way along the folds. I completely sank into her, my nails gripping her ass harder than before.

She kept her fingers running there for a while, until a moan tumbled right into her mouth. Her pointer and index finger circled my clit softly before entering me with such gentleness, I practically passed out right there and then.

I could feel her moaning falling into my mouth and her own arousal as she ground her centre across my right thigh. With her fingers in me and my thigh on her, we found a steady rhythm. We started moving to it and it was like creating music. There was a melody in the beat of every breath she took and it was harmonized with our moans and our whispering kisses.

She was pumping quite hard into me and I knew I was falling over the edge. I pulled her harder onto my thigh and she let out a tremendous groan. I knew she was close too.

But I didn't want it to stop.

Santana was touching me so good down there and it was a feeling I never wanted to leave. And when she began tracing her tongue across the whitening depths of the scar on my face, I forgot that my brother was in prison and my mother was in hospital and my father was in heaven. I forgot that I had been hurt so many times by my family and I started realising that over the years, I'd made my own, all by myself.

Gramps, Grandma, Miss Pillsbury, Quinn, Rachel, the glee kids, Brucie, Tubbs and now Santana.

My family.

I breathed hard into Santana's ear and when she kissed me again, she whispered, "Brittany, I think I love you,"

I never climaxed so hard as I did then and when she followed soon after, I thought that this is what I want for the rest of my life. Her and me, touching each other this way and kissing each other this way.

When we collapsed to the hay laden stable floor, she pulled me close to her and kissed my forehead.

We were silent for the rest of the night.

After that night, Santana and I were inseparable. We hardly spoke but when we did, it was through glances or through love.

We had the most intimate and deepest conversations when we touched each other. She told me how her father had named her Little Caterpillar because she was going to grow into something even more beautiful one day. I told her how my daddy had died when I was four and that my brother had blamed me for the car accident. She told me how she'd grown up drinking nothing but alcohol because she thought that was normal after her father died. I told her how I'd hurt myself all the way through high school and she told me that she knew.

Grandma loved Santana. Miss Pillsbury was her legal guardian until Santana moved away. But we both decided that being on the farm and being around one another was where we always wanted to be.

And now we're getting married. Now I'm standing here, looking in the same mirror I once saw Santana in, wearing my Grandma's old wedding dress and smiling a smile I never thought I'd see. I can hear Rachel's loud voice organising the band outside in the yard and Jimmy's worn out tractor heaving the hay bales into place. Quinn is standing ready at the altar as my maid of honour and Miss Pillsbury is helping Santana.

I take a sneak peak at my wife to be as she straightens her white trousers and braces. Miss Pillsbury sorts out her shirt collar and as she turns around to swat a fly, she catches my eyes from up in my bedroom. She smiles at me and then winks. I smile even wider and mouth, "I think I love you."

She grins so wide, her eyes crinkle at the side and those dimples appear.

Grandma comes in, straightens out my dress, curls my hair and tells me I look beautiful.

She leaves to give me a couple minutes by myself. I walk over to my chest of drawers and pull out a large red box. Inside, I find thousands of little white notes, each from the same person, and each with the same message.

"_**Ohana means family; family means no one gets left behind.**_

_**Or forgotten."**_

_**- Little Caterpillar**_

**Please review if you can. I'm in a bit of a Disney mood since I'm going tomorrow so I couldn't resist me some Lilo and Stich. Poppy x**


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